This is the Horatio Alger-like story of a country boy with only a partial college education who rose to cabinet level in two presidential administrations - and whose brilliant reputation was forever tarnished by false accusations about his Watergate role. One of the Presidents' Men chronicles Maurice H. Stans's astonishing career.

Stans takes us inside the halls of Washington power as he describes his twenty years working with presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. He provides new views of these two very different men, of their motives, their strengths, and failings, and of the men who aided and betrayed them. And, for the first time, we learn how John and Robert Kennedy abused their power to hound Stans out of a position in banking simply because he helped Republicans effectively criticize the Kennedy budget.

Perhaps most important, we get this decent man's story of what really happened in Watergate. We see him falsely accused and unjustly treated in the savage world of Washington politics, where rumor and innuendo replace fairness and justice. His is a prime case of how the media, power-hungry politicians, and special prosecutors can gang up to create an image of guilt, even if charges cannot hold up in court.

The Watergate frenzy engulfed Stans and damaged his hard-earned reputation as an honorable man proud to serve his country. Not until a major 1992 story in The Washington Post were the Watergate accusations publicly acknowledged as false. As he tells his side of this story, Stans warns against a continuing Washington climate in which partisanship and headline hunting can hurt good people not able to defend themselves.